Today there exists many multi-heat apartment and office buildings which have a central heating and/or air conditioning system. In these multi-unit buildings, the owner thereof pays the expense of providing heating and/or air conditioning to the individual units. The basic central heating and air conditioning systems are controlled by a thermostat. The thermostat, located in a unit of the multi-unit building, may in turn control a blower, a valve or a damper also located in the unit. The central system will distribute either hot and/or cold air or liquid to each unit. The blower, located in the unit in either the air or liquid central system, will distribute the heated or cooled air into the unit as demanded by the thermostat.
When a valve or damper is controlled by the thermostat, either is driven to its fully opened or closed positions upon an appropriate signal from the thermostat or it may be driven to several intermediate positions in response to the thermostat.
Central heating and air conditioning systems are the most efficient means for heating and cooling multi-occupant buildings. However, a problem does occur when a multi-unit building is converted to condominium units. The basic problem with the central unit when converting an existing multi-unit building to a condominium, or in fact, building a new condominium unit, is how to monitor the energy proportionally consumed by each unit and to distribute the cost of operating the central heating and/or cooling system proportionally between the various units. The customary means for allocating heating and cooling cost in the multi-unit buildings is to take the total cost and divide it between all of the units. This method is obviously unfair in that an occupant of a unit is paying for heating and/or cooling they are not using when they are away. Also, some occupants require more heat and cooling capacity than others. Recent studies by the Federal Government indicate that when occupants are individually metered with regard to their energy consumption, rather than equally billed, a significant reduction in energy consumption results. Without metering, an occupant may go on vacation and leave his air conditioning or heating running. However, if the occupant is aware that he is being charged for the energy consumed in his unit, he will turn down the thermostat to a minimum level when he leaves.
To the best knowledge of applicant there are no known devices for use to accurately and economically monitor the heating and/or cooling energy consumed by an individual unit in a multi-unit building.
The device that I have invented will effectively and efficiently monitor the amount of heating and/or cooling energy consumed by each unit in a multi-unit building enabling one to efficiently and economically ascertain their fair cost for said energy with an additional overall effect of energy conservation.